Early to Mid-Twentieth Century Chinese Literature

The goal of this book is to offer intermediate level students of the Chinese language a brief and simple introduction to the reading of early to mid-twentieth century Chinese classics. Many students are confronted with the difficulty of reading Chinese novels and the questions relating to their translation. This small collection of texts is drawn from well-known modern literature written in the vernacular as opposed to the classical style which persisted until the Revolution of 1911. With the appearance of authors such as Lu Xun, Ba Jin, Mao Dun and later Zhou Erfu, pioneers in this new style, Chinese literature became accessible to all. This book presents short extracts from their popular novels that have been translated into English. These extracts are presented in the original Chinese text with traditional or simplified characters, an English translation, a synthesis of the individual characters and their pinyin phonetics, accompanied by English dictionary equivalents.